That might be the most sensible post you made on the forum. Of course neither of them are remotely electable, but the point stands....

That depends on the situation of the United States. If it's in bad economic shape (like we are in now) with extended military entanglements that many in the electorate on both sides of the spectrum both oppose, then Paul could get in.

Or a backlash by cultural conservatives en mass (ie moral majority) plus the economic parts I laid out in the Paul scenario, Palin gets in.

I feel like Evangelical should be higher, but I'm struggling to think of any Evangelical 2016 candidates who could plausibly win. None of the likely Democratic candidates are Evangelicals, are they? On the GOP side, the potential 2016ers who are Evangelical would be.....who? Pence, Perry, Thune, Walker? I think there's an outside chance of Cruz running, and he's an Evangelical, isn't he? In any case, the collective probability of all of those guys being the next president isn't very great.

I feel like Evangelical should be higher, but I'm struggling to think of any Evangelical 2016 candidates who could plausibly win. None of the likely Democratic candidates are Evangelicals, are they? On the GOP side, the potential 2016ers who are Evangelical would be.....who? Pence, Perry, Thune, Walker? I think there's an outside chance of Cruz running, and he's an Evangelical, isn't he? In any case, the collective probability of all of those guys being the next president isn't very great.

I feel like Evangelical should be higher, but I'm struggling to think of any Evangelical 2016 candidates who could plausibly win. None of the likely Democratic candidates are Evangelicals, are they? On the GOP side, the potential 2016ers who are Evangelical would be.....who? Pence, Perry, Thune, Walker? I think there's an outside chance of Cruz running, and he's an Evangelical, isn't he? In any case, the collective probability of all of those guys being the next president isn't very great.

For the record, Pawlenty initially converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism, and when he was first elected Minnesota Governor he usually was identified as a Lutheran. But then when he got national ambitions he started going to his wife's evangelical church instead, and all of a sudden he kept claiming to be an evangelical. Kind of like his political chameleon tendencies. But I don't see a guy who's now heading a Wall Street lobbying firm getting nominated.

I'll go with Catholic. As the initial post pointed out, most of the current prospects are Catholic, so it seems likely. I suppose a dark horse could come along in the next four years and mess that prediction up, but right now it seems like a safe bet.

Roman Catholic, then Jew, then another Mormon. Funny how Obama's win is in one way a sort of continuity for the US- yet another protestant president (obviously if anything bad happens to Barrack, Biden will be 2nd RomC president after Kennedy). And one day, the US may just have an openly atheist president!!

I'd bet on Catholics for the reasons mentioned in the first post. It almost seems as if the majority of potential top-tier candidates, on both sides, are Catholic.

The top non-Hillary Democratic candidates are Catholic: Joe Biden, and Andrew Cuomo. There's also Antonio Villaraigosa, Julian Castro and

And then there are the top-tier Republican candidates: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan. And then there's Susana Martinez, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum and Bob McDonnell.

It's not even certain that there will be any Jewish candidates, although Charles Schumer, Rahm Emanuel and Eric Cantor are possibilities. Although I wouldn't even say they're strong possibilities. I guess if both parties nominate controversial figures, Bloomberg might enter. But he'll be 74.

As for Mormons, Huntsman is a possible candidate. Especially since two of the other potential moderate candidates (Scott Brown, David Petraeus) had bad weeks, which likely disqualified them from running for Prez, leaving little competition for the slot.

There aren't a lot of Evangelical contenders. On the Republican side, Huckabee is a possibility.

The Democratic frontrunner (Hillary Clinton) is a mainline Protestant. As is Mark Warner (who would probably be top-tier if he ran) and are a few of the potential second-tier candidates (Rand Paul, Howard Dean).